Haiti’s Independence Ransom: Revisiting the Cost of Freedom (1793–1794)

The independence debt was the price of the general emancipation of 1793–1794, and the Haitian population had to pay what amounts to a collective emancipation tax paid to France—this is the conclusion reached by Gusti-Klara Gaillard Pourchet. The Haitian historian and co-chair of the Franco-Haitian joint commission retraced the historical mechanisms that led Haiti, a free country since 1804, to have to buy back its independence in 1825 at the cost of a crushing debt, during a lecture given at the Collège de France on June 13, at the symposium “Haiti 1825: from Independence to Debt.”

Jonasson Odigène
Par Jonasson Odigène
09 Jul 2025 | Lecture : 3 min.

 

Titled “The Independence Debt: The Price of the General Emancipation of 1793 to 1794,” Gusti-Klara Gaillard’s presentation shed light on how the freedom of former slaves was perceived by colonial France as an economic loss to be compensated. In her address, Ms. Pourchet highlighted the process that led to the abolition of slavery in Saint-Domingue in 1793–1794, without any compensation to the masters, and then to the imposition upon Haiti, thirty years later, of compensation payments to those

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